On the complaint of any constable or of any Child Welfare Officer that any child is a neglected, indigent, or delinquent child, or is not under proper control, or is living in an environment detrimental to its physical or moral well-being, any Justice may issue his summons addressed to any person having the custody of the child requiring him to appear before a Children’s Court at a time to be named in the summons, either with or without the child, in order that the child may be dealt with in accordance with the provisions of this Act.

This new feature in our law did not displace the jurisdiction of Magistrates to deal with offences charged against young persons.  Any doubt regarding the continuance of their powers was removed by the passing of the Child Welfare Amendment Act of 1927.  All offences by children (except murder and manslaughter) are therefore still dealt with by a Magistrate, but in the Children’s Court.  In other words, it is not at present mandatory upon a parent to attend the Children’s Court when a child is charged.

In practice it is frequently found that the parent comes to Court with a child who is charged with a breach of the law.  This may be due to a family interest; it may be due to a direction by a Magistrate in some district that he will not deal with a child in the absence of the parent; it may be due to a misunderstanding of the law that, because a parent is summoned for having a delinquent child and may be required to bring the child with him, therefore when the child is summoned the parent must also attend.

This distinction between summoning the parent of a delinquent child to the Children’s Court and bringing an offending child up on an offence can best be illustrated by what happened in the cases of carnal knowledge and indecent assault which were brought prominently to the notice of the public recently.

The offending boys were charged under those sections of the Crimes Act which prescribed maximum penalties of five or seven years imprisonment.  In most cases convictions were recorded and the boys were admonished and discharged; in a few cases the charges were dismissed; in other cases the boys were committed to the care of the Superintendent or placed under the supervision of a Child Welfare Officer.

The girls, not having committed a breach of the Crimes Act or any other statute, could not be charged.  Their parents were, in appropriate cases, summoned to Court upon the complaint that they had the custody of a “delinquent”, or a child not under proper control.

That the above distinction is not merely a formal one is shown by the fact that an offending boy’s name, and the decision of the Court regarding him, is always recorded in the Police Gazette.  As the girl is not charged as an offender her name is not so recorded, even although (as shown in Section V (2) of this report) it may have been the misbehaviour of the girl which led the boy into the commission of the offence charged against him.